Forum having issues with imgur?

Sersch7 · Jun 26, 2018

Hey,

i since a couple of days it seems that the forum doesn't display imgur images (.gifs) anymore (i have one in my signature and use them in my gamedev thread. I can view those images from all other places i'm using them.

Anyone an idea why?

Sirfetch’d · Jun 26, 2018

Apparently Imgur has recently blacklisted us from using image hotlinks unfortunately. There is no real solution to this as it is completely out of our control. I'd recommend using another site for uploading images.

tranceking26 · Jun 26, 2018

That's a shame, I only have imgur for image hosting, the other sites I tried in the past became premium only.

I hope this is not a permanent thing.

It does seem like imgur has gone downhill nowadays, they say things are a lot more moderated to suit the advertisers. It's certainly not as good as it was a few years ago.

Taemin · Jun 26, 2018

For the broken images, I think ibb would be a good alternative. For the forum in general, or anyone really.

Logan · Jun 27, 2018

Hotlinking from imgur is supposed to be allowed on forums (according to their ToS) so I think we could work something out with them

Avatar · Jun 27, 2018

Castform said:
Apparently Imgur has recently blacklisted us from using image hotlinks unfortunately. There is no real solution to this as it is completely out of our control. I'd recommend using another site for uploading images.

This not exactly correct. PC is effectively using Imgur as a CDN and that's why the site has been blacklisted. If it had only been a few images I doubt the blacklist would've been enforced but as it stands multiple themes use Imgur for quite a lot of images.

I don't think this will be fixed in any other way than finding another site to take its place as a CDN.

tokyodrift · Jun 27, 2018

Might be worth having one of the admins contact them about getting us whitelisted if it's not being done already.

Venia Silente · Jun 28, 2018

Avatar said:
This not exactly correct. PC is effectively using Imgur as a CDN and that's why the site has been blacklisted. If it had only been a few images I doubt the blacklist would've been enforced but as it stands multiple themes use Imgur for quite a lot of images.

That's really... very poor design decisions when there's more controllable choices. Even 2000's web programming teaches, if you are serving "editorial line" along with your central functionality (company logos, themes, interface icons for example) then you deliver those yourself or via the CDN to which your hosting is already suscribed, not via a general use site.

Would a good first measure be to first fix the PC themes to serve from PC or Cloudflare and stuff and then get to talk to imgur? Showing a first gesture of work as an opening move kind of thing.

Hiroshi Sotomura · Jun 28, 2018

Venia Silente said:
That's really... very poor design decisions when there's more controllable choices. Even 2000's web programming teaches, if you are serving "editorial line" along with your central functionality (company logos, themes, interface icons for example) then you deliver those yourself or via the CDN to which your hosting is already suscribed, not via a general use site.

Would a good first measure be to first fix the PC themes to serve from PC or Cloudflare and stuff and then get to talk to imgur? Showing a first gesture of work as an opening move kind of thing.

There's a few oversights which allowed this to happen; I was intent on serving stuff like icons to PC, so I guess I've been forced to do it now, haha.

Any other broken images you find (that aren't posts by other users) need be pointed out so we can deal with it. There shouldn't be too many cases.

Wunkolo · Jun 30, 2018

So it looks like it blocks purely based on the Referrer field of the html header. Which browsers automatically put when embedding images onto a page.

Code:

curl "https://i.imgur.com/fpXE2BJ.gif" -H "Referer: https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?p=9896065" -i
HTTP/2 403
retry-after: 0
content-type:
accept-ranges: bytes
date: Sun, 01 Jul 2018 02:53:09 GMT
x-served-by: cache-lax8624-LAX
x-cache: MISS
x-cache-hits: 0
x-timer: S1530413589.190726,VS0,VE0
access-control-allow-methods: GET, OPTIONS
access-control-allow-origin: *
server: cat factory 1.0
content-length: 0

but if you remove the referral then it works just fine of course

Code:

curl "https://i.imgur.com/fpXE2BJ.gif" -i
HTTP/2 200
last-modified: Tue, 20 Feb 2018 18:46:48 GMT
etag: "7872661ad1b19794f9191f46c2d1d8e6"
x-amz-storage-class: STANDARD_IA
content-type: image/gif
cache-control: public, max-age=31536000
accept-ranges: bytes
date: Sun, 01 Jul 2018 02:55:15 GMT
age: 192
x-served-by: cache-iad2137-IAD, cache-lax8625-LAX
x-cache: MISS, HIT
x-cache-hits: 0, 1
x-timer: S1530413716.778418,VS0,VE1
access-control-allow-methods: GET, OPTIONS
access-control-allow-origin: *
server: cat factory 1.0
content-length: 245448

Chrome automatically injects these referrals into the header for cross-domain requests:

At the moment the best client-sided fix for Chrome is to run chrome with the "--no-referrers" command line option.

As in running chrome via:

Code:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe --no-referrers

Then these images all seem to work.
This is a very general fix and will fix other cross-domain blocking that imgur is doing such as on GameFAQs and such.

kitarei · Jul 2, 2018

Wunkolo said:
So it looks like it blocks purely based on the Referrer field of the html header. Which browsers automatically put when embedding images onto a page.

--- snip---

I tried disabling HTTP referrer in Firefox using the about:config setting Network.http.sendRefererHeader, but it doesn't seem to make a difference. I'm not very familiar with this, so just wondering if you have any suggestions for the Firefox browser? (It's the only browser I have access to in my corporate environment).

pastelspectre · Jul 2, 2018

for me, my signature seems to be working fine but i don't know if it's showing up for anyone else

Sersch7 · Jul 5, 2018

No i can't see a Signature there.

On Topic: Any news? Is there still hope the admins might fix this issue with imgur?

Nah · Jul 5, 2018

Sersch7 said:
On Topic: Any news? Is there still hope the admins might fix this issue with imgur?

Last I heard, the admins have reached out to imgur and are awaiting a response from them.

Enpatsu Shakugan · Jul 5, 2018

I kinda hope something happens. There are no good sites that I can go back to past that.

Just now a one and done thing. Bad if you ever want to go back to something.

Caite-chan · Jul 6, 2018

It seems like for me my picture will work in some spots but not others. IE: Works in Other Chat but not in Pokemon Trivia.

tranceking26 · Jul 19, 2018

Is there any update on this?

Enpatsu Shakugan · Jul 20, 2018

Pretty sure it's been remedied.

Disturbed · Jul 20, 2018

yep it's all fixed

tranceking26 · Jul 20, 2018

Enpatsu Shakugan said:
Pretty sure it's been remedied.

Disturbed said:
yep it's all fixed

Thanks for letting me know. I just tested it on the desktop wallpaper thread and it works fine.

Forum having issues with imgur?

More options

Sersch7

Sirfetch’d

Guest

tranceking26

Taemin

move.

Logan

[img]http://pldh.net/media/pokecons_action/403.gif

Avatar

tokyodrift

[i]got me looking for attention[/i]

Venia Silente

Inspectious. Good for napping.

Hiroshi Sotomura

Wunkolo

kitarei

☕ milk tea & 💻 code.

pastelspectre

Memento Mori★

Sersch7

Nah

Enpatsu Shakugan

Caite-chan

tranceking26

Enpatsu Shakugan

Disturbed

tranceking26